Billion dollar London sales test art market mettle

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON (Reuters) - More than a billion dollars' (more than 500 million pounds) worth of art goes on sale in London over the next 10 days, the latest test of the market's resilience amid signs of recession.

Prices for the most sought-after artists continued to rise in the last year, defying global economic gloom caused by falling stocks, rising oil prices and the mortgage meltdown.

Some experts predicted a slowdown, with a small number expecting a full-blown crash, but despite a few blips along the way and signs buyers are more cautious now than at the same time last year, auction houses are confident.

Reporting from this month's key Art Basel international contemporary art fair, the Art Newspaper reported buyers were thinking harder before parting with their cash.

"A frazzled economy and boom-market pricing transformed some of last year's buyers into this year's browsers," it wrote.

The London sales, second only to the equivalent series held in New York, kick off on Tuesday with Christie's Impressionist and modern art evening sale.

The highlight of the night likely to be Claude Monet's "Le Bassin aux Nympheas". Estimated to fetch between 18 and 24 million pounds, it may break the auction record for the painter which stands at $41.5 million set when "Le Pont du Chemin de Fer a Argenteuil" sold in New York in May.

On Monday Christie's holds its main post-war and contemporary art sale, featuring "Naked Portrait With Reflection" by British artist Lucian Freud which is expected to fetch 10-15 million pounds.